“It’s our lot, my dear, and we maun bear with it.”
Thus it came to pass that I and Miss Betty were left by ourselves in a very comical situation.
There was silence for a space of time between us; at last she drew a deep sigh, and I responded, to the best o’ my ability, with another. Then she took out her pocket-napkin, and began to wipe her eyes. This is something like serious courting, thocht I to myself, for sighs and tears are the food of love; but I wasna yet just ready to greet; hoosever, I likewise took up my pocket-napkin, and made a sign of sympathy by blowing my nose, and then I said—
“Miss Betty Græme, how would ye like to be Leddy of Auldbiggins, under my mother?”
“Oh, heavens!” cried she, in a voice that gart me a’ dinnle; and she burst into a passion of tears—the whilk to see so affectit me that I couldna help greeting too; the sight whereof made her rise and walk the room like a dementit bedlamite.
I was terrified, for her agitation wasna like the raptures I expectit; but I rose from my seat, and going round to the other side of the table where she was pacing the floor, I followed her, and pulling her by the skirt, said, in a gallant way, to raise her spirits—
“Miss Betty Græme, will ye sit doon on my knee?”
I’ll ne’er forget the look she gied for answer; but it raised my courage, and I said, “E’en’s ye like, Meg Dorts”—and with a flourish o’ my heel, I left her to tune her pipes alane. This did the business, as I thocht; for though I saw her no more that night, yet the next morning she came to breakfast a subdued woman, and my mother, before the week was out, began to make preparations for the wedding.
But, lo and behold! one afternoon, as Miss Betty and me were taking a walk, at her own request, on the high road, by came a whisky with a young man in it, that had been a penny-clerk to her father, and before you could say, hey cockolorum! she was up in the gig, and doon at his side, and aff and away like the dust in a whirlwind.
I was very angry to be sae jiltit a second time, but it wasna with an anger like the anger I suffered for what I met with at the hands of Annie Daisie. It was a real passion. I ran hame like a clap o’ thunder, and raged and rampaged till Mrs Græme was out of the house, bag and baggage. My mother thought I was gane wud, and stood and lookit at me, and didna daur to say nay to my commands. Whereas, the thocht o’ the usage I had gotten frae Annie Daisie bred a heart-sickness of humiliation, and I surely think that if she had not carried her scorn o’ me sae far as to prefer a bare farmer lad like John Lounlans, I had hae sank into a decline, and sought the grave with a broken heart. But her marrying him roused my corruption, and was as souring to the milk of my nature. I could hae forgiven her the watering; and had she gotten a gentleman of family, I would not have been overly miscontented; but to think, after the offer she had from a man of my degree, that she should take up with a tiller of the ground, a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, was gall and wormwood. Truly, it was nothing less than a kithing of the evil spirit of the democraws that sae withered the green bay-trees of the world, when I was made a captain in the volunteers, by order of the Lord Lieutenant, ’cause, as his lordship said, of my stake in the country.—“The Last of the Lairds.”